Laughing Gull

Laughing Gull / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

I GREW UP WITH GULLS, but as far as I can remember, I never heard a laughing gull until we moved to Wachapreague. Even here, they don't laugh all year - though I think they are here for most of the year. 

Their name describes them pretty completely. Imagine a Wicked Witch of the West laugh, but in a gull's high-pitched voice, and you'll have it. It's a sound I love - and a sound that makes me laugh - and one that also can be annoying, if you're trying to do something, and failing at it. There are the gulls, laughing their heads off at you. 

They were some of Peter's favorite seabirds, and we always listened for their return, much as we listened for the start of the peepers in the earliest spring days, and the hum of the cicadas as summer reached and waned. 

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For Today

“My choice of color is dictated by tact and decorum stretched by an unholy desire to be outrageous. I’m trying to get color to the danger point where it’s too sweet or too noisy without actually making it too sweet or too noisy.”  

- Wolf Kahn